Modern communications networks are highly complex and flexible, typically providing support for a variety of new and legacy circuit types. The complexity of equipment configurations, variety of vendor-specific feature sets and prevalence of domain-constrained management systems can provide real challenges to the circuit designer. Even where the design of telecommunications circuits is assisted by automated tools, the sheer size and complexity of networks often still lead to inefficient, cumbersome design processes requiring a high degree of human design input.
The present invention seeks to alleviate some of these problems.